In order to eliminate the effect of an external magnetic field, particularly the effect of a magnetic field coming around from a magnetic recording medium, perpendicular (or vertical) magnetic recording heads are generally provided with a write shield film, in addition to a main magnetic pole for writing. Heretofore, the shield film provided in a read element has also been used as the write shield film, but U.S. Pat. No. 6,754,049 B1 discloses a structure in which the write shield film for the main magnetic pole is provided separately from the shield film of the read element.
However, even if the magnetic shield structure disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,754,049 B1 is adopted, there is still a limit to reducing the effect of an external magnetic field, particularly the effect of a magnetic field coming around from a magnetic recording medium, upon a recording magnetic field, which leads to the problem of adjacent track erase (hereinafter referred to as ATE) or pole erase. The pole erase is the phenomenon in which a signal having been recorded by a recording magnetic pole on a magnetic recording medium becomes erased when a recording operation is not executed.